ON THIS DAY
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE APRIL 9, 1943
A PROTEST against immorality in Nazi teachings was broadcast in German from Vatican Radio last night, with extracts from a pastoral letter issued by the Bishops of Cologne and Paderborn. It said ‘free love’ was being made ‘an heroic gesture’ by the Nazis, with ‘slogans being held up before young women that unmarried motherhood was equal to legalised motherhood’.
APRIL 9, 1969
HASKELL KARP, the first man to have his heart replaced by an artificial heart, died one day after his second transplant. Mr Karp, 47, lived for three days with the plastic device before it was exchanged for the heart of a 40-year-old woman.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
CYNTHIA NIXON, 52. The Manhattan- born actress best known for playing lawyer Miranda Hobbes in the TV series Sex And The City won an Emmy Award for the role in 2004 — and, in 2011, a Golden Raspberry for the worst actor in a big screen spin-off. Nixon (right), a prominent campaigner for LGBT rights, met her future wife at a gay rights rally and last month announced via Twitter that she was running for Governor of New York. IAIN DUNCAN SMITH, 64. The MP for Chingford dubbed himself ‘the quiet man’ when he became Tory leader in 2001. The son of a ballerina and a Spitfire pilot, he was a triple jump champion as a child. Known as IDS, he was nicknamed Drunken while in the Army — an ironic name because he was ‘so desperately serious’.
BORN ON THIS DAY
HUGH HEFNER ( 19262017). The American founder of Playboy magazine was also a campaigner for samesex marriage, abortion and liberal drugs laws. Hefner, who was described as ‘American men’s titillator-inchief ’, married his third and final wife Crystal Harris (pictured) in 2012, when he was 86 and she was 26. CHARLES BAUDELAIRE (1821-1867). The poet, dubbed ‘France’s first rock star’, wore velvet clothes, dyed his hair green and has inspired Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen and The Rolling Stones. He wrote about sex, drugs and death and in 1857 was prosecuted and fined for obscenity by the French government, who banned six of his poems.
ON APRIL 9...
IN 1838, the National Gallery opened in Trafalgar Square. IN 2005, Prince Charles married Camilla Parker Bowles at Windsor Guildhall.
WORD WIZARDRY
GUESS THE DEFINITION: Alectryomancy (1684) A) Divination by tossed pebbles. B) Divination using fingernails. C) Divination by means of a cockerel with grains of corn. Answer below PHRASE EXPLAINED The game is not worth the candle:
Used to apply to an enterprise not worth the cost or effort involved. It dates from the 17th century, when gambling games were lit by candles and a player losing would reckon the game was not worth the cost of the candle.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
The British may not like music, but they love the noise it makes. Sir Thomas Beecham, English conductor (1879-1961)
JOKE OF THE DAY
WHAT’S the difference between a jeweller and a jailer?
One watches cells, the other sells watches. Guess The Definition answer: C